Terror At the Top of the World

As the story goes...

back in the 1600's there was a big push among the Catholics to spread Christianity throughout Asia.  In 1628 a Catholic priest (of the Jesuit order) from Portugal spent some time in Tibet and then showed up in Nepal. Apparently it was the first time anyone in Nepal had ever heard about Jesus or about anything that had to do with this strange "Christian" religion.  The official histories say that this priest, Father Juan Cabral, was welcomed with open arms by the Hindu King Lakshminarasimha Malla (and you thought you had to spell your name for the barista at Starbucks!).  I cannot find anything else about what Father Cabral did or what happened to him after his initial reception by the king.

In the 1660's a couple more Jesuit priests, one from Belgium and another from Austria, came to Nepal but apparently didn't stay very long.  It does not appear that there was any kind of sustained Christian presence in Nepal until 1707 when a small group of Capuchin friars walked into the city of Kathmandu.  Capuchins (the Catholic religious order, not the monkeys) follow a form of Franciscanism.  They were founded back in the early 1500's when a Franciscan friar felt that the Franciscans had gone soft, gotten a bit wimpy in their Franciscanism.  He wanted to found an order that would be as "hardcore" as Francis of Assisi himself.  The small group of Capuchins lived in Nepal for fifty years.  This lasted until a change in government in 1769 forced the very small Catholic Christian community to leave Nepal to find refuge in neighboring India. Christians of all different flavors started showing up again in Nepal in the 1950's and have been around ever since.  My own aunt and uncle were missionaries to Nepal back in the 1980's.  Although Nepal is still almost entirely Hindu, there is still a small Christian minority of between 1% and 2%.

Something interesting about Nepalese Christians is that they worship on Saturday instead of Sunday.  A lot of us think that we have to worship on Sundays but it doesn't say that anywhere in the Scriptures and Jesus never mentioned it.  He just said to gather together, but he never said when to do it.  We have gathered on Sundays over the past 2,000 years for the most part because Jesus was raised from the dead on a Sunday. Yet even a stickler for rules like John Calvin said that even though Sunday should be the default, if another day works better for the vast majority of folks that it just makes sense to worship on a different day. Well, Saturdays make more sense in Nepal because Saturday is the one day of the week that is a government holiday. Most folks have to work on Sunday but they don't have to work on Saturday.  So they worship on Saturdays.  Again, what is important is that we gather to worship, not when we gather to worship. The reason I bring up Saturday worship is that it was during the Saturday Christian worship time just a few days ago that the massive 7.8 earthquake shook the nation, killing at the very least 4,000 people.  Stories are coming out about church buildings collapsing onto worshiping congregations.  One congregation just outside Kathmandu lost 80 worshipers when their rental worship space fell on them.  Because of the concentration of Christians in small spaces at the time of the quake (because they were in worship) it is estimated that even though Christians make up just 1.5% of the population that between 10%-15% of the dead are Christians, that is our brothers and sisters in Christ.

In the wake of this horrific natural disaster, Christians are joining with everyone else in coming together not merely as a Christian family but as a human family.  It is important for us to be faithful to God in Jesus Christ at all times, but one of the ways that we are most faithful is by loving our neighbors regardless of who our neighbors happen to be (remember the parable of the Good Samaritan).  No matter what faith (or non-faith) someone claims, that person is created in the image of God, loved by God, and it is a person through whom we can minister to our Lord Jesus Christ (remember the parable of the sheep and goats in Matt. 25).  Love is the language of the Christian and I am proud of our particular group of Christians (the Presbyterian Church (USA)) for reaching out to the suffering in Nepal.  Here is the latest press release from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance: "PDA is providing emergency aid through partnership with ACT Alliance.  Members of ACT Alliance which have been working in Nepal for several years are on the ground and already working to assist many who have survived the quake, by distributing immediate lifesaving supplies such as water, food, shelter, and medication."

Please pray for the people of Nepal, no matter what their faith.  Also, though, pray specifically for our Christian brothers and sisters in Nepal.  Pray that in their grief, shock, and fear that the Holy Spirit will comfort them and pray that in the midst of their own suffering that they will reach out to others in Christ's name.  Also, give.  You can do that here at DONATE TO PDA.

May the God of resurrection bring many good things out of something so terribly bad.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Everett

Sunday Morning at the Ballpark

As the story goes...

back in the early 1970's a Detroit sportswriter by the name of Watson Spoelstra noticed that some Major League Baseball players were trying to organize chapel services for their teams on Sunday mornings.  He thought that worship for those who work in professional baseball was important enough that it should be supported in some official way by the league.  He presented this idea to the MLB commissioner at the time, Bowie Kuhn.  The commissioner approved Spoelstra's proposal and in 1973 Baseball Chapel began.  By 1975 every team offered a chapel service at the ballpark every Sunday morning of the season.  Baseball Chapel spread to the minor leagues in 1978 and now every single MLB-affiliated Minor League ball club has Baseball Chapel on Sunday mornings.

We like to spend a Sunday afternoon at the ballpark.  We saw evidence of this last Sunday when some fortunate members of our church family headed out right at the end of worship to go to watch the Cincinnati Reds and St. Louis Cardinals play.  Our enjoyment of Sunday games, however, means that not just the players, coaches, and umpires, but every single person that works at the ballpark has to be at work on Sunday.  Boo hoo, right? Multi-millionaires have to work on Sundays.  Big deal.  Well, first of all, multi-millionaires are created in the image of God, loved by God, saved by Christ, and in need of worship and Christian community too. Secondly, what about the guy or gal that sells hot dogs and cotton candy?  Lots of people have to work on Sundays these days. We can't complain about people working on Sundays and then expect to be able to eat lunch at a restaurant or fill our car with gas or go shopping a the grocery store on Sundays.  The only reason they have to work--and players have to play--is because you and I value their services on Sundays.  So if they can't go to worship, worship has to go to them.

That being said, too many of us in the church still live in a past during which the vast majority of folks had Sunday off and people could be expected to come to the church's building on Sunday for Sunday school and worship.  We still expect for people to come to us in order to have their lives touched by the gospel and how it is lived out by this community of faith.  Here we are on the corner of Market and Hinde Streets.  The doors are unlocked early on Sunday mornings.  Come to us.  It is time for us, however, to have a reality check and the place to start is with the Scriptures. You see, Jesus didn't tell his disciples, "Find a place to hang out and then people will come from all over the world to hear what you have to say."  Nope. He said, "Go and make disciples of all nations."  The key word is, "GO!"  In the Bible, the Holy Spirit is constantly sending the early church out to spread the gospel, taking the gospel to people, meeting them where they are.  I applaud the folks of Baseball Chapel for doing just that.  

Not one place in the Scriptures does it say that Christians have to meet in a certain place, in a certain building, or even at a certain time.  Worship at a ballpark is just as valid as worship in a cathedral.  Worship in a breakroom in a factory, or in the lounge of a dormitory, or on a submarine, or in a bean field is just as glorifying to God as the pope leading mass at St. Peter's Basilica (and maybe more so depending on the hearts of the participants).  If what we want is to perpetuate the institution of the church as it currently is then it might make sense to sit around waiting for people to come to us.  If what we want to do, however, is what Jesus called us to do, which is spreading the gospel, then we are going to have to follow Baseball Chapel's example and go to them. As A.A. Milne, the author of the Winnie the Pooh books, once wrote, "You can't stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you.  You have to go to them sometimes."   

               

There's Always Been Sunday School... Or Has There?

As the story goes...

the cities of Britain in the late 1700's were crowded, unsanitary, soot covered, awful places to live. Poverty and disease ran rampant.  Infant mortality was high and children worked long dangerous hours in dark unventilated factories.  Stop to thank God that you were born in the 20th Century instead of in the 18th. These poor children worked six days a week, and they received no education whatsoever.  The only day of rest they had was Sunday.  

In the 1780's mission and service minded British Christians decided to start offering classes on Sundays to teach these (predominantly "unchurched") children to read and write.  Hence the name Sunday school.  As a textbook, they used the Bible. In addition, they usually studied a simple Christian catechism, learned hymns, and learned Christian morality. Even poor and working class families that had no interest in the Church otherwise, sent their kids to Sunday school for the valuable free education.  This movement spread across the Atlantic to the United States. This model of Sunday school as a mission and evangelism outreach to poor children lasted until just after the American Civil War.  It was around that time that more young children (though nowhere near all children) were going into public schools instead of going to work at the factories. Eventually children learned to read and write in those public classrooms.  The original model of Sunday school had served its purpose and was no longer needed. It is then that Sunday school evolved into being exclusively about the deepening of faith and biblical knowledge.    

Prior to Sunday schools, children were educated in the Christian faith at home by their parents and grandparents.  Eventually, though, as Sunday schools became less about teaching predominantly "unchurched" poor children to read and write, it became more about educating the children of Christian adults in the Christian faith.  The parents' job became the Sunday school teacher's job.  Hopefully it was a team effort.  The idea of adult Sunday schools seems to have come much later as an innovation.  Both children's and adult Sunday schools met with great success in the post-World War II decades when religious and community involvement skyrocketed. This is evident from the photos you can see in most churches of Sunday school classes from the 40's, 50's, and 60's with overflowing classrooms of both children and adults. Most people in a certain age group think that is how it always was, but really those decades were abnormally successful when you look at the history.

I have been a part of a large number of conversations with folks from all kinds of churches all over the country and the vast majority are saying the same thing, "Hardly anyone comes to Sunday school anymore." This is especially prevalent when it comes to children, youth, and their parents, but it is becoming more and more true when it comes to all ages of adults as well.  Sunday school is dwindling.  People are panicking. There has always been Sunday school!  We can't have church without Sunday school!  It may seem that way but it simply isn't true.  Sunday school in any form has only existed for about 245 of the 2,000 years of Christianity.  Sunday school in its current form for children has only existed for about 145 years and Sunday school for adults has existed for a much shorter time than that.  Sunday school as a highly attended successful model for Christian education has only existed for about the past 70 years, which is less than 4% of Christian history.  Now that brief era of success seems to be winding down.  

Recently I read an interesting article written for the Presbyterian Mission Agency called "Why We're Not Interested in Your Sunday School: Young Adults Seek New Forms of Christian Education," The author, a certified Christian Educator named Andrea Hall, writes "Regrettably, many congregations continue to employ the traditional Sunday school model--designed to transmit information that [young adults] no longer seek.  Maybe it's not incidental that many congregations are experiencing declining particpation, especially among [young adults] and their children.  The Sunday school model may no longer be the most effective way to reach young people in the United States."  I encourage you to click on the link to read that article as it offers many good insights and suggestions.  

Although those folks who do participate are well "fed," the obvious truth is that Sunday school participation is very low in our congregation.  I know it makes some folks uncomfortable or even mad to consider it, but what might other models of Christian education look like for all ages? What did Christians do during the other 96% of Christian history when Sunday schools didn't exist, existed for different reasons, or weren't yet successful?  What are some things that have never been attempted before or that are working elsewhere? Sunday school hasn't always existed, and it won't always exist.  People's particular needs during a particular time in history are what birthed Sunday school.  It just might be people's particular needs during a different particular time in history that cause it to either change drastically or to die altogether.  For too long we have thought that if we just do the same thing differently or better it will work this time.  Maybe, but probably not. Sometimes (but not always) the answer is something completely different.  I'm not suggesting anything concrete, but it is something a lot of people in the Church are thinking about, and probably something we ought to be thinking about too.